Page 40 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

T HE boat’s doors opened, and passengers began to disembark.

The first two were a man and a woman. Americans.

The rotund woman had attempted to adopt European fashion, but the stylish clothes didn’t sit well on her heavy frame.

Her husband hadn’t even bothered to try.

In defiance of everything that passed for fashionable attire on this side of the Atlantic, he wore high-waisted jeans paired with a button-down dress shirt and sneakers.

As if to add insult to injury, a baseball cap sat at a jaunty angle on his shaved head.

Americans .

The couple breezed down the ramp connecting the boat to the dock and then onto the pedestrian walkway.

The woman was chattering, and the man was nodding dutifully as he followed his wife.

Ilya thought that ridding the world of these two might actually begin his atonement process, but he let the pair go.

He was not a fan of Americans, but they were not his target.

A heartbeat later, a pair of men exited the boat together.

Both were dark-complected and about the same height, but their similarities ended there.

The first man’s broad chest and powerful shoulders strained the fabric of his suit.

His head swiveled on a thick neck, scanning his surroundings as he placed his bulk between the second man and any perceived threats.

His charge was rail-thin with expensive taste and hungry eyes. His suit was expertly tailored and his leather shoes were expensive. Like his comrade, the thin man’s gaze swept the crowd, but rather than suspicious people or likely ambush sites, his attention lingered on something else.

Women.

Girls, actually.

According to his dossier, Youssef bin Muhammad had a penchant for prepubescent girls.

At one point in his life Ilya would have found this practice abhorrent, but fires stoked by moral outrage no longer burned in his belly.

The Afghan mujahideen had a penchant for children too, but their tastes ran more to boys.

Boys kept chained like animals. Ilya’s feelings toward the thin man were more resignation than acceptance.

If experience had taught him anything, it was that the world beyond the walls imposed by civilization was a dark place inhabited by dark men engaged in dark deeds.

Youssef might be dressed like a cultured businessman, but he was still a barbarian.

After confirming the Syrian’s identity, Ilya turned away from the men and lit a cigarette.

As he shook out the match, the Vympel operative marked the duo’s progress using storefront windows on the far side of the street.

The bodyguard looked his way, and Ilya engaged in a fit of fake coughing, bowing his head under the stress of his spasming lungs.

A quick peek in the window confirmed that his subterfuge had been successful.

The bodyguard had continued his scan, perhaps searching for healthier threats.

Still tracking the pair via their reflection, Ilya deposited the lighter and cigarettes deep into his overcoat pocket with his left hand.

His right hand was fingering something else.

With a final glance at the window, Ilya took a steadying breath, turned, and drew the pistol from his right pocket in one smooth motion.

The Beretta handgun was chambered in 9mm. The rounds were subsonic, the action well oiled, and the stubby suppressor screwed onto the muzzle was custom-made. While not Ilya’s weapon of choice, he understood why another assassin felt differently.

Something triggered the bodyguard’s attention.

Whether it was the flurry of motion as Ilya drew the handgun or maybe just honed instincts, the result was the same. The bodyguard turned and his coal-black eyes found Ilya’s. Ilya thought that they widened for an instant. Perhaps the instinctual recognition felt by one predator for another.

He would never know.

Just as the bodyguard’s massive muscles began to twitch, a 115-grain projectile entered his skull at four hundred yards per minute.

The hollow-point slug mushroomed as it tore through the cranial bone.

Like a snowplow pushing aside half-melted sludge, the bullet carved an ever-widening path through the bodyguard’s cerebral cortex before exiting his head in a spray of bone and brain matter.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

The thin man turned as his bodyguard crumpled.

Ilya expected him to run. He didn’t. Instead the terrorist snarled as he lunged toward his assailant. Ilya nodded. Though either action would have been futile, the thin man had chosen fight over flight. Ilya hoped that when his time came, he would also choose to go out swinging.

Ilya squeezed the pistol’s trigger a second time, and the thin man’s head snapped backward, as if he’d been hit by a devastating uppercut. Then he collapsed in a puddle of flesh. Ilya took careful aim at the top of the man’s head and fired a third time.

Three shots, two dead men, two seconds.

Not bad.

The beginnings of a collective murmur filled the air as what had just transpired began to register with bystanders.

If he walked away now, Ilya could disappear to the north before anyone was the wiser.

Instead, the Vympel operative extended his pistol in a two-handed grip, centered the front sight post on the chest of the bobby, and pulled the trigger.

The police officer’s shirt jumped.

The bobby staggered.

Spinning, Ilya tracked the pistol to the Asian family. The front sight post passed over the daughter but found a home in the center of her father’s chest. Ilya squeezed off two more rounds.

Then the pistol went back into his pocket.

Hunching his shoulders, he sprinted for the alley to his right, chased by a little girl’s screams.